


why does the sea rush to shore

by zonophone



Series: naki & shuu [3]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 13:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11464710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zonophone/pseuds/zonophone
Summary: It's about three beats after Kaneki says it.Shuu finds himself opening his mouth.“You must celebrate your wedding accordingly. Leave it to me, I'll prepare something fit for a king.”





	why does the sea rush to shore

It's about three beats after Kaneki says it.  
Shuu finds himself opening his mouth.  
“You must celebrate accordingly. Leave it to me, I'll prepare something fit for a king.”  
It took him three beats to put the tremolo threatening to rip his chest at ease. But it was nothing compared to everything else—the rooftops they'd stood on together, the Lunatic Eclipse tower and before the Anteiku raid—so three beats was all it took, now.

First things first. If his hands trembled then Kaneki's wedding ceremony attire would be ruined. His bride wouldn't look the part and the outfits had to match so they'd be no mistaking. Him and everyone else were celebrating them.

Hidden in the depths of his mother's closet there was a Balmain gold and black dress with patterns and symmetry he memorized during lonely evenings of his childhood. He'd trace the embroidered designs with his fingers and commit to memory the delicate touch of the fabric, the smell of unused, stored clothes. There too was a record player he'd sometimes play his mother's favorite records on, the ones he imagined were her favorites, the ones with songs he sometimes caught his father humming when he thought no one was near. Vinyls from the sixties and eighties that would crackle with static when he slipped them out of their paper sleeves with all the gentle care his trembling eight year old hands allowed.

He keeps them almost completely level now, as he sews jewelry onto cloth that's not nearly as soft. But he's learned to make the most of things with a small smile and forget the constant thrumming of pain and words and festering wounds at the back of his mind.

His mother's two most favorite songs, from what his precarious detective work had garnered, were break up songs. He'd found the term in an English encyclopedia of popular music that his father kept in one of the shelves of the library and never opened. Shuu imagined it must've belonged to her. Two pages were dog eared, for reference, and one of them explained the concept of a break up song, or a torch song, and he'd engulfed the information the way he'd devoured descriptions of human consumption of food. He'd found the idea so bizarrely romantic and noble he had had no words for it back then. A couple of times he'd sung one of his mother's songs at karaoke—one time before he'd taken a large bite of a gorgeous girl with auburn hair and had almost felt sad at the fact that she wasn't aware enough to witness the poetic beauty of her own death punctuated by the soft rhythm of love lost. It certainly was the end of the world for her.

He steadies his hands again, running them through his hair. Organizing an event as grand as a royal wedding should be is hard work but hardly beyond his own capabilities. And he knows that if he asked, his father would help—even without the need for asking—but he feels it terribly important—though he's keeping his thoughts away from why exactly that is—that he do this himself. That his father isn't there to ask him why he's playing his mother's song on the computer, his back to it, as he sews and plans and hums distractedly with steady hands that are definitely not sweating.

There was a tactile romanticism to setting the vinyl on the record player and watching the needle follow the grooves of its surface, pulling the words and the music and the human sentiments of frailty and loss, echoing across the vast emptiness of his parents' closet. But a recording found on the internet has to do now. He's lost much more than just that.

Hori comes in the room, face glued to her phone, and asks if he needs any help without looking up.  
“Not for now, Hori. I'll make a decent dress for you too.”  
“I don't need one, Tsukiyama.”  
“It's a wedding.”  
“Hm.”  
She doesn't say anymore and scurries away as silently as she crept in, as if she's sniffed out a trap with cheesecake for her.  
“At the very least I should make clothes for Yomo and Hinami,” he says to no one, once again alone in the empty room. He's busy with this and the song and the steadying of his hands that cannot falter and the steadying of his heartbeat that cannot break when Naki, never one to go unnoticed, stops at the threshold and watches Shuu for far too long without a word.

“Whatcha doin' Yamada?”  
“Vêtements pour le mariage, Monsieur.”  
“Huh?”  
“Did you need anything?”  
“Nah, just bored. Whatcha doin' then?”  
Shuu exhales. The song's over so he plays the other one. It's fine, to just play those two songs. It's good for his concentration.  
“Clothes, for the wedding. Shall I make a dashing suit for you too?” at this he points a finger, in the shape of a gun, at Naki, and is surprised at how natural it seems, the movement. How he barely had to force himself to smile.  
“Weddin'? Yer gettin' married?”  
Turning his focus to the clothes once more he gives his back to Naki, who's still at the threshold.  
“Our king is.”  
“Yer marryin' Kaneki?!”  
  
Shuu drops the needle and the plastic jewel. It cracks in two when it hits the floor. Fortunately he has more of those. There's a lot of stuff that's been dumped in the 24th ward that at least looks the part. But before picking it up or doing anything he just stares at it. At other things he's seen lying, destroyed, on the ground. It takes him three beats again, and two exhales, before he turns to Naki, leaving the broken plastic thing on the floor, and says “No” with a smile.  
Naki just watches him. He doesn't smile but doesn't seem confused either, which is a new expression in him. He's changed in the time that Kaneki's devoted to teaching him but he's still very much the man who Shuu found himself getting surprised at back when. Back then, before everything happened.  
  
“Kirishima is,” Shuu finally gets out. It was a long time coming, that he'd trained himself to say those words. They sound so natural now too. Almost as natural as Naki nodding and then shrugging.  
“Don't need clothes. I'll wear my white suit, it's the coolest thing I can wear.”  
“You wear that same suit toujours. This is a special occasion.”  
Shuu picks up the needle from the floor, ignores the other stuff like he does so often, and goes back to his task.  
“Ya already made this one for me, s'just more work.”  
“How considerate.”  
“I'll help ya.”  
Shuu places his hands on the table, for support, and turns his head to Naki, with a smile that's finally actually not forced. It's the one he uses when Naki says something so incredibly stupid it's almost as if he was doing it on purpose. If he was someone else maybe he'd call it fond.  
“Do you even know how to sew, Monsieur?”  
“Soo? Whossat?”  
“Needle,” Shuu illustrates, holding up the needle, “and thread.”  
“Oh. Nah, I don't,” Naki says, almost with pride.  
“How do you intend to help then?”  
“Uh, want me to play that song again?”  
Shuu notices then that there was no more music playing so he sighs, with a smile.  
“Sure.”  
  
Naki does so. At least he's not bad with computers. But then again even a baby can use those. After he's done he walks over to the table where Shuu has all the clothes laid out, along with the fake jewelry, scissors, and the sewing machine.  
  
“Looks like a lotta work. Sure y'don't need help?”  
Shuu hums. His favorite part of the song, and he imagines his mother's too, is when the singer stops her singing and delivers the line as speech. It gives the whole thing all the more emotion.  
“Tes amis, they have some wine stored, non ?”  
“Wine?”  
Shuu nods.  
  
When Naki's trying to remember something he slouches, his legs bent at the knees and feet wide apart, and he places his right hand on his chin. A perfect caricature of thought. Shuu would find it endearing if he had the mind to, right now.  
  
“Think so.”  
“You can help me get those, for the ceremony.”  
“Now?”  
“It's tomorrow. I can't have all the clothes done so quickly.”  
“Yer amazin' Yamada.”  
Shuu's thrown aback by the change in topic. By the sincerity in Naki's words. He watches him with caution, his smile and his careful mask falter.  
“Ya do all these things with the clothes and the things and also plan the attacks, and yer doin' that excurtain thing to the forest, too. And y'know so much about everythin'. Yer really amazin'. I think we'd be lost without ya, y'know. Don't think anyone else can do so many things.”  
  
Shuu watches Naki regard the clothes and the trinkets on the table with admiration, a smile on his face—it's like the one he wore when they went against the clowns, like the one he wore when Shuu prepared rooms for all the ghouls, even like the one he wore when Shuu told him he admired him, years and years ago—and he's silent for too long.  
  
“It's my duty.”  
“Yer what?”  
“My job.”  
“Still, s'amazin'. No one else can do that.”  
“You only think that because you can't—”  
“No,” Naki interrupts, hands on his hips, chest puffed out. “S'true.”  
  
Shuu hesitates for a second before finding that his smile isn't as strained, comes with less effort than it has since he opened his mouth and told Kaneki to leave things to him. He even finds his hands steady without having to make the conscious effort to keep them from trembling. It's not long but it's enough that he takes note and has half a mind to thank Naki, sincerely, return the open, vulnerable way he expresses his beliefs, unafraid of ridicule, but tables that thought behind another one of the smiles he's practiced, eyes closed, finger pointed upwards.  
  
“Évidemment, Monsieur.”  
Naki looks proud at this too, as if Shuu's agreement was a badge of honor itself. Shuu wouldn't call this smile fond, either, but it's close, perhaps.  
  
Sometimes he finds the times he spends interacting with Naki mirror in an opaque yet distinct way those days he spent at the apartment he rented for Kaneki and Hinami and the others, the quiet nights in which he was surprisingly allowed to stay and share their quaint domesticity. Like a staving off loneliness.  
  
“Hey!” Naki grabs him by the shoulder violently.  
  
Other times he finds himself with a headache.  
  
“Flowers!”  
“Do you have a point, Monsieur?”  
“Weddin's need flowers, right? And with meanin's yeah? Like the ones ya taught me, so we need flowers. I can get those.”  
Shuu sets aside the warmth of Naki remembering enough of those couple of days spent talking about flowers to pass the time to ponder his point. It's a fair one.  
“Where will you find flowers down here?”  
“Some stuff grows in the cracks, I seen it.”  
“Those are weeds. Not suited for weddings.”  
“Huh? Isn't it okay? For down here?”  
Shuu sighs.  
  
He's making do, after all. With plastic jewelry he's collected from discarded toys and clothes humans or ghouls have let go of seasons past. Why should the flowers be any more than what they, what remains of the ghouls, are, why should he look down on that which the underground wants to give him, for a wedding that's not even his own, a wedding that he'll regardless put his all into, for it's for him. For him.  
  
“I suppose so.”  
Naki pumps his fist, like he must think human Yakuza do, and makes a motion as if ready to bolt out of the room.  
“Be sure to find the prettiest ones.”  
Naki nods, but, even though his body looks like he's ready to go, he lingers. When he moves, finally, it's towards the computer, to play the other song.  
“Merci, Monsieur,” Shuu says, his attention once more on the clothes.  
“Welcome,” Naki says, hands in his pockets.  
  
Shuu almost forgets himself. He remembers that he'd finally gotten through to Naki about the meaning of merci some days ago. It's a kind of pride too, that he taught Naki something. Anything at all. Naki who remembers the names of his dead every night and wears his heart on the sleeve of his white suit along with the marks of dirt and living and walking forward.

 

 

 

 

  
Kaneki looks beautiful, Shuu thinks, watching him from the crowd. Beautiful, with his hair parted and the fantasy crown Shuu came up with late last night, or this morning, right before Hori walked in with a mug full of lukewarm coffee his father sent his way while it was still hot. Beautiful with the make up Hinami applied on his cheeks and eyes, borrowed from Shuu's personal stash. Beautiful, there in the distance, by the side of the one he loves and who loves him.

The hard plastic faux gold of the jewels that dangle from both Kaneki's head and Kirishima's catches the lights of the underground and for a moment you could even believe they're fit for royalty.

There's a pang in his chest and a twist somewhere in his stomach and he watches his shoes on the pavement and loosens his tie before tightening up again. He has to look presentable at the very least.

The weeds that Naki collected adorn some of the metal structures and some he placed on the ground to signal a path down which Kaneki and Kirishima walked hand in hand. When they did Naki caught Shuu's eye and winked with a toothy grin, gave his thumbs up, as if to say the whole thing had been a success thanks to their joint efforts. He smiled too and gave a thumbs up back which only made Naki's smile grow. It soothed the aching pangs just a tad. He realizes though that at least it's not only on a personal level. Doom hangs over everyone's heads as they take a breather to forget whatever it is they keep putting aside. A war, a massacre, extinction. The world keeps going round no matter how happy or miserable one can be after all. There's only the motion to keep going forward and whispering the names of the dead left behind every night and the living who've also been lost.

He disappears in the crowd, something he's unused to, blends in with the other ghouls who have dressed up for the occasion and retreats back to the sewing room from where he oversaw the preparations for this party. He covers his mouth with his hand, in the empty solitude of the room, and muffles a couple of breaths that threaten to become sobs. He's lived through the end of the world once before, he's stronger for it. And the sun kept shining as he lie on his bed for years on end, there's no reason it'll stop now. He can do it again. He can live through this again.

When Naki and Hori, who have somehow found themselves in a one sided discussion where Naki speaks with a frown and Hori ignores him like she does Shuu, make their way into the room, he's able to show them a smile.  
“Ya should come see Yomo, Yamada.”  
“I think your father's crying.”  
“He always cries at weddings,” Shuu says, laughing softly.  
“Ya should go comfort him! Cryin' alone's no good.”  
“Certainement, Monsieur. Shall we?”  
“I heard there'll be cake,” Hori's eyes almost sparkle as she says this, following after Shuu.  
“Should be fun seeing Monsieur trying to eat cake.”  
“Why'd I do that?”  
“It's tradition,” Shuu nods solemnly.  
Naki hesitates, between protesting and not wanting to seem like he holds any kind of kingly tradition in contempt. He alternates between looking at Hori, who doesn't give anything away, and Shuu, who wears his best smile that speaks business.  
“Do I hafta?”  
“We'll see.”

When he returns, Kaneki and his bride are sitting atop a scaffold, their legs dangling, the lights sparkling off their outfits, and he's beautiful like he ought to be.  
Naki and Hori are still arguing and Hinami tugs on his arm to once again thank him for her dress and Yomo's drunkenly pestering Nishiki and he realizes. He can do this again. He can live through this again.

**Author's Note:**

> i write the canon compliant slow burn shuunaki i wanna read bc no one else will i have no choice


End file.
